The Guru on Sacrificial Lambs
One of my favorite reads is BCS Guru. As a retired sports journalist he's seen what goes on behind the curtain and often, of course, it's not pretty. Well he's just penned a great piece about the sacrificial lamb that bit back: Appalachian State University. An excerpt:
The Body Bag Games.Another choice quote:
That's how it was for Gene Murphy, coach of the woebegone Cal State Fullerton football program until its bitter end in 1992. The Titans were a Division I-A team all right, to this day the proud owner of two NCAA D-IA records: Most fumbles (73) in a single season, and most fumbles lost (41).
I should know because I was part of that traveling circus from 1988-91. We still have bruise marks after receiving beatdowns in places like Gainesville, Auburn, Baton Rouge and Morgantown. And on occasion, the Titans would bus to the Rose Bowl to get a neighborhood spanking.
All for a glorious $250,000 check.
Michigan's administration also didn't do its homework, either. The Wolverines had the pick of the litter for this Body Bag Game, with a $400,000 payout dangling from the gates of the Big House. The Mountaineers practically begged for this game -- that right there should've aroused some suspicion.Read the rest here.
Mentioned in Austin Murphy's book 
4 comments:
cracks me up, this BCS Guru who claims he spent an afternoon with BO but yet is retarded enough to miss the point of what BO stood for by bring up this nonsense about Michigan not "doing their homework" by scheduling a possible spoiler in a successful small college team. (may an alligator occupy this asshat's swimming pool). maybe he spent his youth reading the SEC book on running up the score on pre-conference "body bag bookings". this game will be remembered for those Appalachian kids, the romanticism of the game as BO would have put it and nothing else. Michigan isn't squirming for an excuse, it was a great game, their words. until ya see an SEC team scheduling a USC like Ohio State will the next two seasons pre-conference, fraid BCS Guru will still be looking at the BIG TEN for an entertaining preconference schedule.
Err, let's see - Georgia plays Oklahoma State, Tennessee plays Cal, Auburn plays Kansas State.
Are those pre-conference "body bag" games?
Sure my Gators played a patsy this year. Next year we start with Hawaii, then Miami, as our pre-conference games.
But at least we could handle our pre-conference pasty...
These games are really annoying. We all go in knowing Florida is going to win. Its still sort of fun and the band is good, but the football game sucks. It wouldnt be that hard or risky to schedule USF or Clemson or something would it? A good football game is the best part of football not a guranteed win. Next years OOC schedule looks good, I dont know why we cant do that every year.
I know about the money that UF likes to get for home games, but I would much rather watch a game vs. Miami on TV than a game vs. Western Carolina/Kentucky in the swamp. Can we boycott patsy games or something?
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